The holidays are here, and shoppers are already placing online orders at a feverish pace. Wondering why you’re not seeing increased activity on your website during the holidays? It could be due to one or more of these 4 reasons:

1. You aren’t optimizing for seasonal keywords—During the holiday season, certain keywords related to your products and services may suddenly see a huge spike in search volume. This is quite normal. These are called seasonal keywords. For example, during the winter, the search volume for “sweaters” will obviously increase as the cold weather is on people’s minds. Use a keyword research tool that gives insight into search trends so you can optimize your website for all seasonal keywords.
2. You haven’t invested in PPC—Pay per click marketing is great all year round, but it can be particularly effective during the holidays. Consumers are using the internet to shop for gifts, and if you have a strong paid search presence, you can draw in lots of traffic. To get the best results during the holiday season, update your ads with holiday-themed copy. This makes your ads timelier and more relevant, thus making them more appealing to shoppers.
3. You aren’t increasing your email frequency—Now is a good time to bump up the frequency for your email marketing campaign. Everyone else is doing it, and if you don’t, you run the risk of having customers forget about you during the holiday rush. Now, that’s not to say that you should be emailing often just to do it. You need to still make sure you’re sending value-driven content each and every time.
4. Your offers are weak and irrelevant—Shoppers are pickier now than at any other time of the year. They want to make sure they stretch their holiday gift buying budget as far as they can. That doesn’t mean you have to be the cheapest in town, but you do need to make the best offer. Show your customers that you provide the best overall value. And don’t forget, offering great deals on shipping can be especially attractive during the holidays.

What are some other common reasons for a lack of holiday website traffic? Share your thoughts in the comments.

After years of writing PPC ad copy for campaigns, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot along the way. Here are 7 common mistakes you should avoid when writing your PPC ads.

1. Selling the product, not your company—If somebody is searching for “blue widgets” they are already mostly sold on the idea of blue widgets. Your ad doesn’t need to sell them on blue widgets. It needs to sell them on buying blue widgets from your company, not one of your competitors. That means your ad should be focused on selling and differentiating your company, not on trying to sell a product that the searcher already knows he wants.
2. Choosing to be clever rather than clear—You only have 95 characters to work with. Delivering a clear, powerful message in that tiny space is challenging. If you try too hard to be clever, you’re going to sacrifice the clarity of your message, and you’ll see your CTR decline.
3. Playing it safe—Too many times, advertisers just look at what the competition is doing with their PPC ads and mimic it. The result? Their ads become indistinguishable from their competitors, giving searchers no good reason to click on them.
4. Not having a call to action—It’s Advertising 101. An effective ad always contains a call to action. If you aren’t motivating searchers to take action, they’re not going to click on your ad. That’s all there is to it.
5. Ignoring the season—Seasonal PPC ads work. They just do. Adding a seasonal offer to your ad copy is a proven way to get more click-throughs and ultimately more conversions. It makes your ad more relevant, helping it stand out from the rest.
6. Not matching your ad copy to the landing page—Your ad copy and landing page should go together like PB&J. Whatever your ad message is should be the focus of your landing page. If there’s a disconnect between the ad text and the landing page copy, you’ll see your conversion rate drop.
7. Wasting words—Between the headline and the ad text, you have 95 characters to work with. Not only does every word count, every letter counts. You can’t afford to waste a single character. That means no fluff and no wordy, industry jargon. You have to make the most of your limited real estate. Your ad should separate your company from the competition and have a call to action.

What are some other common PPC ad copywriting mistakes? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

As a copywriter, I deal with a lot of projects that involve SEO copywriting. On these projects, the client will typically send over a sitemap that includes a list of keywords to target on each page. Pretty standard stuff at this point.

However, I occasionally get clients who insist on incorporating misspelled keywords in their copy because they get a good amount of search volume. And I refuse to do it.

For example, let’s say I’m doing copy for a website that sells daiquiri mix. “Daiquiri” is a word that’s commonly misspelled in a number of different ways, and I’m sure those misspellings garner some decent search volume, but that doesn’t mean you should incorporate them into your website copy.

Why not? I’ll give you a couple of reasons.

First, let’s look at it from an SEO perspective. The whole idea behind targeting misspelled keywords is to drive traffic, right?

Google’s main initiative is to improve the quality of their search results. They’re trying to get rid of shady, low quality websites, and you can bet that, sooner or later (if it doesn’t already), Google (and the other search engines) will see websites that are full of misspelled words as low quality and spammy.

But that’s not even the most important reason to avoid incorporating misspelled keywords into your copy.

Think about your visitors. I don’t know about you, but I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing business with a company whose website was full of typos. It just doesn’t look professional. It makes your company look amateurish, careless, and possibly sketchy. And in a day and age where consumers are less trusting than ever before, you can’t afford to give them another reason to distrust your company.

Do you target misspelled keywords on your website?

A lot of the copywriting projects I get involve SEO. Sometimes, a company wants to redo their entire website to ensure it’s optimized properly for the search engines. Other times, their website is already optimized, but they want to continually add new pages to it so they can target new keywords and drive more search engine traffic to their site.

It makes sense, and it’s a strategy I can get behind. Somewhat.

Look, I think it’s a great idea to add fresh content to your website for SEO purposes. The search engines like seeing new content, and the more relevant keywords you can target, the more traffic and potential customers you can bring in.

But my problem is this. When I ask some clients what the purpose is of the new content for their website, a number of them respond with something like this: “It just needs to target this keyword. I don’t really care much about what’s on the page. We just need to rank for that keyword.”

What?!

In other words, they simply wish to add content to their website for the sake of SEO, not for the sake of getting more conversions, attracting more leads, and making more money. They’re simply concerned with getting the rankings, no matter what the content looks like.

My question to clients like this is “What’s the point of having a page that ranks well for a keyword if that page doesn’t motivate visitors to take an action?” Just having a generic, general information page with a targeted keyword peppered in seems completely pointless.

Another potential issue that arises with constantly adding new pages to your website for SEO is that your site can actually get too big, making it overwhelming for visitors to browse. Remember, user experience determines the success of your website. If your visitors can’t find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily, they’ll leave your website. So make sure you’re not adding so many pages that your site becomes challenging to navigate.

My point is this. If you’re going to add new pages to your website for SEO purposes, make sure they also enhance the user experience and push the visitor to conversion.

In the past few years that I have spent blogging and chasing search engine traffic I have come to realize that it’s very hard to put your finger on traffic prediction and keyword targeting. Over the years I have managed to rank #1 for keywords I thought would have killed my server, and then get bombed traffic from page 2 keyword results that I would have never of guessed in a million years had traffic.

There’s an array of different applications and programs that help you fish for the right keywords to target. But all in all these programs –the ones that work– more less act as a guide. Nothing is certain, and results are never guaranteed. I think partly why some people are not successful with these programs is that they depend on the application to tell them what to do.

See this video for a visual example:

The better approach to take is to “question everything.” If a keyword ranking tool suggests that the keyword phrase “concrete rebar suppliers” is a hot keyword to chase, you should immediately question why? Why does the program indicate that this keyword phrase has traffic? Why should I invest my time, money, and effort into targeting this keyword phrase? What elements make this keyword phrase a potential candidate for a successful keyword targeting campaign? In other words, you should take it upon yourself to study and research this phrase and come to your own conclusion on what to expect prior to moving forward.

The other aspect that I have learned is that people search for practical things. It seems like many Internet marketers assume that these keywords are too competitive. Or, they don’t even consider them because they are too obvious. In other words, the idea of targeting a keyword phrase such as “Cinnamon Toast Crunch” doesn’t come across the minds of many people. It didn’t come across my mind either until software showed me that I was landing quite a few impressions for that exact keyword phrase.

So basically what I am trying to communicate to you is that it is great to use software to help you find keywords. But software will never replace the human mind. And software is always based on rules. Our brain is capable of thinking outside of rules and making the choice to either bend or break them. Our minds are also capable of questioning and solving mysteries. Such as why are people searching Google for Cinnamon Toast Crunch? What are they really looking for? Perhaps that’s a bleed off for Cinnamon Toast Crunch ingredients, Cinnamon Toast Crunch nutritional information, does Cinnamon Toast Crunch have wheat, Cinnamon Toast Crunch recipe, or what I think… Cinnamon Toast Crunch coupons!

The long story short: Keywords are everywhere and they come packed with potential traffic. Spend some time thinking about things that you have personally searched for yourself. Ask yourself if you think other people have searched for the same thing? Were you happy with the results? If not, then could you make a better web page? If so, then most likely you will achieve superior ranking for that term.

The last set of “If and Then’s” and “How Much and How Can’s” for people like myself include: If I build a webpage that targets this particular keyword phrase and assuming I achieve superior ranking which delivers traffic, then will this be profitable for me? How can I earn money from the traffic? Can I use Google AdSense? If so, then how much can I expect to receive per click? Are their affiliate programs that I can join? If so, then how much do they pay? What is the average conversion rate? Does the product really work? How does Google feel about this product? So again, software can only go so far. Ultimately, it’s up to you to use common sense with targeting keywords and –for people such as myself– choosing the right ones that will likely yield a profit.

Contrary to what the naysayers believe, press release distribution is still an effective way to get your name out there, build links back to your website, and increase your search engine presence. But of course, there’s a right way and a wrong way to write press releases. Most of them are written the wrong way. Just check out any news wire online and you’ll see what I mean.

The good news is writing better press releases is actually pretty easy. I’ve broken it down into 7 simple rules. Follow these and you’ll be golden.

1. Write a clear, compelling headline that hooks readers—Reporters and customers alike will decide whether or not to read your press release based on its headline. The headline needs to clearly explain what the story is about in a way that sparks the reader’s interest.
2. Get to the point—Your first paragraph should immediately answer the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. Start with this overview of the story, and then delve into the tiny details as you build out the rest of the press release. Don’t bury the lead!
3. Make sure all links are relevant—Yes, press release distribution is good for building links back to your website. However, that shouldn’t be your sole purpose for writing them, and you shouldn’t cram the press releases with links just for the sake of doing so. Links should, of course, be keyword-rich, but they should also be relevant and add to the story.
4. Break free from the traditional press release template—9 out of every 10 press releases begins with the same old “XYZ Company, a leader in (insert industry), is proud to announce (insert news). This is then followed by a bunch of superlatives and buzzwords as well as a few lifeless quotes from executives. Zzzzzzzzzzzz… Feel free to mix things up by injecting life into your story.
5. Ditch the buzzwords—Speaking of buzzwords and industry jargon, they have no place in your press releases. Write in a way that a regular person (reporter or customer) can understand it.
6. Make your quotes count—Too many times, the quotes in press releases are just there. They add nothing to the story, and they’re used to repeat what’s already been said or to inject some bias (superlatives usually follow). Don’t you think you should get more from your quotes? Dig deeper to find quotes that add to the story and bring the news into context.
7. Always include contact info—Every press release should have contact info  for your company’s PR contact. This should include company name, web address, PR contact name, phone number, email, and address.

Are there any other rules people need to follow when writing press releases? Let us know by leaving a comment!

If you have a particular blog post that is getting a lot of search traffic, it might interest you in turning the blog post into it’s own website. There are many reasons why it could be beneficial to do so. One reason is that it can allow you a way to expand on targeting further related keywords based on the primary set of keywords the blog post is already ranking for. Another reason is that the general topic of the article could be expanded into it’s own blog. The key thing to know is that if you have a blog post that is consistently receiving traffic, it is possible to convert the post into a website. In this post, I will show you how it can be done.

A few conditions need to be assumed prior to following these steps. Number one, your blog needs to be a self-hosted WordPress blog. Secondly, you need to have modified your permalink structure to %postname%/. WordPress is database driven and creates dynamic urls. Meaning, pages do not physically exist on your server. Instead, they are dynamically created. For example, if you have a post with the url http://www.yourblog.com/my-post-about-dogs/ in theory, this should exist on your server here: public_html/my-post-about-dogs/index.php. But, if you FTP into your server, you will see that this does not exist.

And that’s the trick. This is how you can convert the blog post into it’s own site or even separate blog. In order to do this, you need to login to FTP and create the physical directory that WordPress has created dynamically, and either upload an index.php file, or simply install a new WordPress blog inside the directory. The beauty of this trick is that even though you have overridden the existing dynamic structure with a physical directory and file(s), the existing dynamic reference is still maintained within the original WordPress install.

That means your existing blog post will still show up in all of the sections in your blog. Formally, if it was still appearing on the home page, even after you override the post by manually uploading a directory and index file, it will still appear on your original blog home page. The same applies to the post reference from the archive, category, search, and tag sections. However, when the post title is clicked on, instead of the original post being loaded, the newly uploaded section will load instead. If you simply uploaded a directory with index.php file, the index.php file will load. If you decided to install WordPress inside the directory, the home page of the newly installed blog will load instead.

The above screen shot shows a blog post I wrote about pizza coupons and specials. The post picked up a lot of traffic in Google so I decided to override the post with a physical php file instead. The dynamically generated URL for this post is http://www.garryconn.com/pizza-hut-specials-coupons.php.

So, in order to optimize this page and capitalize on the traffic, I created my own web page from scratch, saved the file as pizza-hut-specials-coupons.php and uploaded it to the root directory of my server. (i.e. public_html/pizza-hut-specials-coupons.php).

Once I did that, the physical file overrode the existing dynamic file. The end result is now I have my own specially created web page that maintains the same permalink structure as the dynamically created one by WordPress.

Above, I had mentioned that you can do this if your WordPress permalink structure is set to %postname%/, this can also be done if you have it set other ways such as %postname%.php. The key is the make sure that your permalink structure is not set to default: ?p=123. The reason is because you will not be able to manually upload physical files to your server.

I hope all this makes sense. If you have any questions about how to do this, feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll provide assistance as soon as I can.

When you’re optimizing your website for the search engines, one of the things you’ll likely be doing is adding new content to target various keywords and keep your site fresh. Make no mistake, content is certainly important for building a well-ranking website, and there are many business websites out there that have hundreds of pages on them for SEO purposes.

If done properly, having a content-rich website can not only help you rank well for an assortment of important keywords, but it can also improve your website’s usability by giving your visitors access to all the information they need to make their buying decision.

Unfortunately, it’s not always done right.

As you probably know, I’m a freelance copywriter, and a lot of my work involves SEO projects. Many times, I work with SEO companies and clients who want to add content to their website for the purposes listed above. And while I’m happy to take the work (and the money), I often wonder: Does anyone ever stop and ask, “Do I really need that page?”

When optimizing your website, it can be really easy to fall into the trap of saying “We need a page for that too” any time someone mentions a possible keyword, new service area, or whatever else. And when all is said and done, you end up with a ton of pages on your website, but are they actually necessary? And are they worth the time and investment?

If you’re thinking about adding more pages to your website, my suggestion is to ask yourself these questions first, so you can determine if the page is truly needed.

1. Have I really done my keyword research? It’s shocking how often people just guess as to which keywords they should be targeting. Some companies (and even SEOs who should know better) hear a keyword that sounds logical and automatically assume people are searching for it. But that’s not always the case. Never add a page to your website for keyword-targeting purposes until you’ve done your research and verified that your customers are searching for it.
2. How will the page help users? At the end of the day, it’s all about your users. If adding a new page helps them find the information they need or gives them an extra resource, by all means, add it to your website. But if the page is just repeating what they can find everywhere else on your website, I’d think twice before adding it.
3. Where will the page go on the website? Are you going to have to add a new tab in your navigation for the page? Or will it fit neatly in one of the sections already on your website? When you start adding a lot of content to your website, it’s important that you really focus on keeping everything neat and organized. Otherwise, you could end up with a monster.

Immediately after I caught wind of Google Instant, I started researching and observing the reactions from other people within the SEO community. If you haven’t heard about Google Instant yet, let me brief you quickly:

Direct from Google:

“Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.”

You can read more about Google Instant here.

Much like any of the past changes that occurs with Google, many people who have a vested or personal interest in SEO tend to get concerned. I honestly feel the pain, especially when there are situations that I feel will have a profound affect on my own SEO business ventures. The key concern is if Google Instant will Kill SEO? To give some remote rest to your mind, I am one who doesn’t think it will. That said, I do, however, think it will create purge effect on how SEO’s approach their goals.

In this post, I’d like to publish my thoughts on how I think Google Instant will change SEO. The points I make both bring opportunities as well as challenges to the table. The newly found opportunities, I feel, are things that were once challenges, and ironically, the things that typically came easy in the past, are actually things that I now believe are going to become challenges. In all honestly, I see it as simple as that. Nothing less, and nothing more.

To begin with, I feel it’s now more important than ever to make sure that your listings ranks above the top fold, and look good. Google Instant is all about helping speed things up for people. In part of this process, Google Instant places a lot of focus on keeping people off the second and third page results. Instead of viewing additional pages, Google is directing people to adjust their query in the search bar. So, when your listing does pull up in a predicted query result, it’s vitally important that it  pulls up above the top fold and looks appealing. Publishers should revisit the first few sentences of their content. Especially, the content directly below header tags. Also, meta descriptions should be looked at as well.

As mentioned above, Google Instant is being advertised as something that will help speed up searches. But, in my opinion, this is also something that Google has developed to help increase AdWords revenue. If part of their goal is to keep people off the second and third page results, then that inadvertently places an increased focus on sponsored listings. So, if you focus on ranking well in organic search, this is going to make your job a little more difficult simply because the sponsored ads are going to look even better than before.

On the contrary, Google Instant may be useful for search engine marketers simply because it reveals the keywords Google is suggesting to users. Basically, this gives marketers a roadmap on precisely which keywords to target. Doing a basic search for single keyword reveal the most popular long-tail keyword phrases suggested. From there, these popular long-tail keyword phrases can be investigated to see if it’s worth the effort to target.

Another reason why Google Instant can offer great opportunities for online publishers who monetize their content is because people who formally have been bidding on long-tail keywords in AdWords may soon conclude that they will need to start bidding on more primary keywords and phrases due to the fact that their existing long-tail targeted ads may take a dip in exposure. In other words, publishers who have the resources and ability to pull organic rankings for keywords higher up the food chain may start to see a higher the payoff than before.

Another benefit to Google Insight is that it’s being marketing as a service that caters to less computer savvy people. Inadvertently, this means that people who choose to use the service are also more likely to be what I call, “Click Happy.” In other words, you may start to discover that the traffic Google Instant sends your way will be more of people who are unaware of what is user generated content and what is contextual ad based content. In other words, the traffic that Google Instant sends your way can very well lead to a higher concentration of “Click Happy” people. This is great for people who monetize their sites with programs such as AdSense.

Ultimately, it’s my opinion that Google has created a system that does allow people to save time performing searches. But I feel that it’s also a system that allows people to think less for themselves. It’s a system that influences people by offering suggestions towards what to search for. Secondly, it’s a system that optimizes sponsored listings and ultimately helps Google continue to increase revenue with AdWords. This again is due to the increased probability that users will click on the  sponsored listings instead of the organic ones.

All that said, I believe that Google Instant will make SEO easier as well as more difficult at the same time. The simple fact that Google reveals the most popular keyword phrases allows SEO’s to know exactly which keywords to chase. Simple research based on these discoveries will allow SEO’s to determine if it’s worth their time to target them.

Another thing to consider is that it is now very important to focus less on targeting broader ranges of keyword terms within your content. This is something that I have already been doing for many years. In other words, in most cases, what you see in my <title></title>, <H1></H1>, and <H2></H2>, are typically the actual keyword phrases I am targeting. On the contrary, many other marketers tend to focus on targeting secondary keywords within their content as well. In the past, this has proven to work quite well. The way I feel about that is basically, content is material, and just like with any job, it’s always best to control the amount of resources consumed to complete a goal or task. Writing content is a controllable business expense. So, in the past, publishers could easily kill two birds with stone, by targeting multiple keywords and phrases in one copy. Again, many years ago, this was a focus of mine as well. But, in recent years I have decided to write content with the sole purpose of ranking for specific keywords I want, and let the chips fall where they may on anything extra.

Prior to Google Instant, I know that my content did attract an undetermined amount of traffic inadvertently through secondary long-tail keyword targeting. However, I feel now it’s more important than before to place more focus on targeting primary keyword phrases per page rather than both. Once again, the reason being is that people are going to be more critical when it comes to clicking on the results shown. People will be more susceptible to click on listings that have an exact title and description match to the keyword phrase being searched. My point is this. I think that Google Instant will cause publishers to write more content in order to continue experiencing success with gaining traffic organically. The issue at hand is not ranking top fold for the keywords, but more so with attempting to control and mold how Google displays the listing organically. In other words, I feel more content will need to be written in order to customize the results in a way that continues to appeal to people.

On the same note of difficulty, I also think Google Instant may actually makes things more challenging for SEO’s simply for the fact that popular keywords are going to have a surge of newly added competition. Because popular phrases and long-tail keywords are now visible to everyone, the job for ranking for these terms may become more difficult as they are no longer a speculation or even mystery. Now that these predicted search queries are visible, there will be an increase in the number of people targeting them.

Overall, it’s easy to see the debate regarding Google Instant. Will it kill SEO? I am one who doesn’t think so. However, I do believe that it will cause people to adjust their approach. I see Google Instant as something that will bring many things forward that were once difficult. And I see it as being something that will push back the things that were once easy. All in all, I don’t think Google Instant is an SEO killer, but more so an SEO purge. Meaning, anyone is the business of SEO needs to recognize that things can and will change. Further more, those who continue or begin to find success are those who accept, adapt, and adjust to change. These same rules apply largely to any form of business, or general life experience. Change is good. And success comes to those who easily adapt and adjust to it.

What are your thoughts? Is Google Instant a Dream Come True or a Nightmare For SEO?

Yeah. Yeah. I already know what you’re saying.

“Why are you talking about meta tags? They don’t affect a website’s search rankings. They aren’t really important at all.”

While they don’t have an impact on where your site ranks in the search engines, meta tags (particularly description) are still important. Remember, this is what searchers see when they’re looking for your products and services. This is your first introduction to a potential buyer, and it’s your chance to convince them to come visit your website.

So, how can you write a meta description that attracts your target audience and gets people to click?

• Use keywords, but don’t focus on that—Again, placing the keywords in your meta description isn’t important for SEO purposes. Your website will rank the same whether the terms are in the description or not. However, there still is an important reason to use keywords in your description when possible.

The keywords let the searcher know that you have what they’re looking for. For example, if they Googled “Red Trek mountain bikes” and you have “Red Trek mountain bikes” in your description, it tells the searcher they need to go to your website to find what they need.

Having said that, this doesn’t mean you should stuff your meta descriptions full of keywords. It’s all about using them naturally. If you force the keywords in there, the copy will be difficult to read, and searchers won’t click.

• Use strong words—With 10 organic search results and a few paid search results on the page, why should searchers click your website over all the others? They need motivation. You need to use strong, motivating words that get people excited enough to click on your website.

Some good words to use include “discover”, “get”, “receive”, “today”, “free”, etc.

• Be clear in your description—The main purpose of the meta description is to, well, describe what your page is about. You want to attract qualified traffic that won’t bounce at absurdly high rates.

To do this, your description needs to be as accurate as possible. Don’t use gimmicks to get people to come to your website. Don’t use jargon. Don’t try to be clever. Be clear and concise. And give people a good reason to come to your website.

Take a look at your meta descriptions. Do they give searchers a reason to click on your link?